Is Soul Reaping useless?

This was posted on another board. I'm actually surprised that it hasn't gained more attention as it's an obvious flaw. Clearly this primary necromancer attribute is completely useless in PvP as it's too situational, ie. it requires many deaths to work and that doesn't happen in PvP.

What are your thoughts on this? Other than runes and armor looks, why would someone bother making a primary necromancer? Sure for PvE Soul Reaping can be nice, but again I want to stress that the PvP part is the problem. For a game like Guild Wars, which is known for balanced professions, this seems out of place.

Someone on the other board proposed a complete change to the attribute which would lower the amount of health sacrificed for some necromancer skills, which is an interesting idea.

Any thoughts or suggestions of how it could be fixed?

well, whoever thinks so obviously hasnt used a necro prime correctly in pvp. it works fine actually.

When i played you also had blood magic or curses. And death magic. If those are still in im going to specialize in Curses and Death magic

From the description, it looks like a complete waist of attribute points for any serious PvPer. But I have not played a Necromancer so my oppinion doesn't matter, I guess.

Well this subject has been grilled over and over again before in these forums, it has only been sunk with the arrival of new (or at least rehashed) posts.

Yep, Soul Reaping isn't the greatest primary attribute, could probably do with some skills tied into it. On the plus side anything that 'dies' gives you energy, so that could mean ritual spirits, minions, npcs, etc.

Not true. It does happen, just not always. It's too situational because you can never be sure how much you will benefit from it, not because the condition of a lot of deaths is never met.

Since its situational its also the most abusable if you deliberately make stuff die.
For example someone deliberately casting weak nature rituals can give a necro team a lot of energy.

I am no Guild Wars expert ( ) but Soul Reaping represents a general "flaw" of the Necromancer class, if I may call it one.
A lot of necromancer skills require your enemies to be dead before you can use them. It is obvious that the necromancer class is meant to be a support class (your team kills things so you can use the corpses to support your team) instead of the "almighty mage who rules over life & death" kind of necros some of us are used to.

I don't really care for Soul Reaping a lot, I just want to play "a warrior with something extra". However I like the necromancer models better.. so...
I don't think my cheesy blood knight is a very effective character, but I enjoy playing him and will probably have another "proper" character to satisfy my killing urges once the game goes live.

EDIT: Just an idea, Soul Reaping could act as a passive (always on) lifetap. Every time a necro damages a foe, either by using a physical attack or a spell, he would gain a low percentage of HPs (let's say half of his SR attribute) or Energy. This would definitely change a necromancer's role though.

I don't think that's much of a plan. You are limiting the potential of one player who is casting the rituals (or more) while just feeding the necromancers with energy. I think there are better ways for the necromancers to manage their energy. Just have everyone at 100% power potential and killing the enemy. Killing two birds with one stone

It isn't completely useless in PvP, but it is significantly worse than every other primary only attribute. Not only is the effect itself too conditional and weak for PvP (giving energy a moment too late by design, not enough consistent deaths to really abuse), but the line it works well with, Death Magic, is impressively bad in PvP. As there are very few Necro skills that want extremely high (13+) attribute levels, you're generally better off just taking a Necromancer secondary while using a more powerful primary.

The strength of the attribute is PvE, where things die like crazy and Soul Reaping grants a ton of enery. It's still a very good attribute in that environment. But in PvP? Don't bother.

Peace,
-CxE

Are you suggesting a N/R build with wilderness survival? That seems like a sneaky little idea to me... I likey.

Seriously, there has to be spells that will spawn easily-dying units so that the necromancer can summon. It'd work well with strategy, since Necromancer's could surround themselves with weak summons as a sort of defense against Elementalists, who may nuke and kill all those summons and create a heck of an issue with minion-spawns. they could also be used to pin players in, forcing them to kill the spawns.

But then again, too late to change much in the game, and the Necromancer has plenty of other powerful skill lines.

30-60 energy per death not counting rituals? Weak? I don't think so

An all necro team can easily have unlimited energy

...Just how are you getting those numbers?

10 soul reaping, figure bone minions and vengeance. You just have to work it a little.

And say you have 4 secondary rangers with 2-3 rituals each, doesn't matter if you overlap. 80+ energy every 30 seconds (quickening zephyr) = 8+ pips of energy at the least

Once retail comes out you'll start seeing abuse like this. It'll probably end up being toned down if anything.

I still can't see how you can gain energy 30-60 energy per death. If the majority of your team mates are Necros maybe, in which case the gain is just spread out between team mates. Is it any different than saying Fireball can deal 640+ damage?

1) enemy dies - 10
2) Two bone minions are summoned - they eventually die - 20


if the person was an ally,

1) summon minions
2) cast vengeance
3) summon more minions after he dies again


apply death nova liberally

Summoning minions cost 25 energy though.

Veng costs 10 too I think... you don't get much from it personally. As a team you can benefit, but enemy necros will as well, and you are eating the initial cost. It also limits the warriors, rangers, and primary healers you can have as well if you want to make the most of a team SR build. It could be an interesting, viable build but I don't think SR is overpowered. I don't know if its the best mechanism for arena and GvG, but in tombs or pve where stuff dies pretty often it is good.

I mostly play PvE and it works great for me, and occasionally when I play PvP it isn't as good, but I still find it good enough for me to put it onto my skill bar.

the summoner himself only breaks even, yes. You can split it up between 3 people and they'll all gain a good chunk, but it's better to keep it with one char & let him regain from the rituals only. There's definately enough energy from them

We've been working on a necro team a lot on the guild-hall website.

That's still only 10 energy per death.

That's all well and good, except that Vengeance has a 60 sec cool down, and I'd rather have a team mate fully rezzed, as opposed to one that will drop out in 30 secs or when the enemy decides to remove the enchantment.

I'm not sure what kind of team build you have in mind, but I don't think even the 'exploited' benefits of SR is good enough to be better than other prime attributes. Expertise saves more energy, DF makes Monk spells more potent, Warriors lose out their armour and weapon enhancing runes for energy they may gain in overabundance, and Energy Storage has some potent energy regen skills tied to it already. Leaving Mesmers and well, Necros left.

30 for everyone else in your team.
Actually vengeance has a 30 sec cooldown cuz you know we're gonna get quickening zephyr with the type of energy we're talking about. Much of the time it's better to cast veng on a guy, stick a perm spellbreaker on him (3 seconds off time if you work it right), let him spend his energy like crazy then go out with a nova. Rinse-repeat since a max energy no dp res is really really good. You don't really need a real res - just use divine intervention or keep spamming veng

I'd rather spend 10 attribute lvls for unlimited energy than waste my elite and half my build like ether renewal forces you to.

A team full of necros brilliant. Until they face a team full of mesmers.

Ok, so maybe soul reaping can be useful with some highly complex and coordinated, but probably inefficient, set-up.

However that doesn't change the fact that it's simply too situational compared to ALL the other primary attributes.

i understand what tuon is saying, but it would require a whole team of necros, or multiple necros on a team to get the benefits... but this is a team based game, maybe hes just thinking on a higher level than us, no need to bash his teambuild

Or he's thinking mesmers can't do squatt.

Ah, Soul Reaping. Does it still compare poorly to every other primary attribute? Yes, I'd say so. It's far too situation and imbalanced in its effect. Compared to the Elementalist who'll always gain that Energy Storage bonus no matter what or that Monk who'll always have that Divine Favor bonus when they cast, it shifts too widely along a spectrum from pitiful to absurdly good depending on the circumstances. Unfortunately, though, those situations where it's very good are the situations where it's least going to benefit you. Yeah, you can roll up the energy in PvE but that happens only after you start killing things. You need to get that ball rolling to start off with and as you can only store so much energy at a time, if you're facing a lot of opponents your efforts are wasted. It's worse in PvP because once there are a large enough number of deaths to make it anything near worthwhile the significant portions of a battle have passed. Either your team has steamrolled the other side and you've got a lot of energy to play with to "win more" or you've been steamrolled and you've got a lot of energy to spend on a last ditch effort. It does nothing to help you get to that point and that's where the problem lies.

Is there a valid case to be made for playing a primary Necromancer? Well, the armor I suppose, which is probably the best caster armor around, but not much beyond that, I think, as even with runes a Necromancer doesn't really want to max out their attributes, much like a Mesmer. Really, while it's a profession that has somethings to recommend it (But then, not so much. Curses is full of bulky, inefficient spells and is overly narrow. Blood is for BiP and...BiP because there's precious little else there. Idealy it'd be a line to heal and defend yourself while harming the enemy but in practice that's really not the case. And Death is Death. Alright in PvE, horrid in PvP. And it's not just minions - which are the only thing floating this line - it's all the other skills, too. What should be something like an Elementalist's skill line is a rather pale imitation.), it's a profession you don't want as a primary under most circumstances.

That would definitely change a Necromancer around. Probably too drastically, though, especially at this stage of development. I've long favored the idea of changing Soul Reaping from delivering just straight energy to providing for more energy regeneration. The effect is much the same - the Necromancer gets more energy when things are dying - but basing it on regeneration which has a natural cap of 10 pips allows you to balance it a bit better. Say, for example, you would gain 4 pips of regeneration whenver anything died for an amount of time equal to one second per rank in Soul Reaping. Or that when something died, you'd double your Necromancer's regeneration. At SR 12 you'd have that boost last for 12 seconds and gain, over that amount of time, 16 energy. A bit better than what you'd gain now, although spread out over a period of time rather than all at once so you have to discount it as it's energy over time rather than useable energy upfront. However, the real benefit here is what happens when something *else* dies. Under the current system you'd get 12 energy then 12 again. Meaning that you can rake in energy hand over fist. Here, though, what would happen would be like stacking a buff or a condition, you'd just overwrite the duraiton. When that second creature died you wouldn't gain a new boost of 4 pips of regen for 12 seconds, you'd extend your regeneration timer for another 12 seconds. This means that you'd get far less benefit from multiple creatures dying yet greater benefit when you keep up a steady stream of deaths.

Obviously, the numbers need some tweaking and shifting to make it truly workable but the underlying idea is to reduce the situational imbalance in SR's power and give it a slight nudge upwards overall. Necros will gain more energy in a different way than other professions - they'll be less vulnerable to, say, Malaise or other degeneration - but unless they're not spending any energy to begin with there won't be much "wasted" energy.

In my eyes all soul reaping needs is soul reaping linked skills.

Just like strength for warriors.

I think the power of an attribute is balanced by a lot of factors, passive benefit, linked skills, synergies with class design.

The problem with soul reaping in PvP is it's very situational, it only seriously matches with 1 line in the class and it has no linked skills.

However that being said, sometimes it is more efficient to run a Necro primary, especially if you pair it with a ranger or warrior secondary. Maybe you only want a few skills from the secondary and many spells from necro. In such a case the pip and base energy is far more useful then the extra mana and primary attribute.

In my belief soul reaping is not going to receive a huge boost mainly due to the mechanics of the necro being a hybrid-support class already. If it was made into a very reliable very desirable mana regen tool it could be open to abuse by spells from a secondary class (kind of like elementalist/monks in a way). Really this is a tricky situation how do you make a primary attribute which deals in mana regen not abusable yet useful? Especially when the player has the option of only using spells from a secondary class and when 4 classes in the game are casters and rely on mana regeneration.

I really like the idea of a steady regen boost over the current energy dump. Though this may just as well be because you reminded me of alcohol absorption rates (but hey, I guess Necros get giddy from Soul Reaping anyway).

Soul Reaping... I'm not sure how good it is either. But I've read about different groups doing stuff with it; one character was a N/Mo who could heal, so when the team started either winning or losing, he'd start healing because people would be dying and he'd have extra energy.

The idea behind the passive lifetap was to turn Soul Reaping into an attribute that the necro benefits from during a fight, before something dies.

Soul Reaping is similar to the Shadow Priest's Lifetap talent in WoW, it "keeps you going". This advantage however, is somewhat overshadowed by the innate boost to regeneration out of combat.
As previously mentioned, I don't really see SR turning the tide of the battle in a PvP match due to the way it works. Then again, I don't have a lot of GW experience .

Just a thought, but maybe in addition to the energy it gives you, soul reaping could decrease the percent of life you lose when you do a sacrifice spell.

Like, if you cast order of the vampire and instead of losing 17% of your health, you only lose 10 or 11% because you have a 12 in soul reaping.

Not really fleshed out, but I hope you guys get the gist of what I'm saying.

I can see that happening, good idea bad monkey!

energy doesn't regen any more out of battlelol energy storage is horribly front loaded. If you have one summoner in your team, 1 death = 10 pts into energy storage.

Thanks, though I'm surprised no one else posted it first so it could be shot down already

Tuon, have you played GvG by any chance?

I would stop flaming tuon about soul reaping. He does have a point on how you can manipulate the battlefield to your advantage. Get mass nature rituals/pets/summons and you could easily work up corpses more mana for the win.

Soul reaping could use a few more links to it. And i DO like the mana regen idea. I would also like to see spirits to drop corpses to res from.

Umm, the way Tuon says it, you basically need 8 necros, and need a whole lot of skills from each of them. The offense and defense seems lacking. Infinite mana could be obtained, but probably at the cost of you getting spammed by backfire and any other spell they can think of.

When you think about it, 8 necros, what do they have to keep themselves alive with 11/10/10 setup with soulreaping/death magic? Blood might be the only thing, and even then it's a weak type of defense, it relies purely on life transfer I guess. Half the time your spamming up summons to regenerate your mana.

Think about it, can a team of 8 necro/rangers or whatever that mass summons really even live that long from focus fire? Their probably going to die before their summons do.

So, everything is fine since the attribute can be 'exploited' in extremely rare situations, when you have a gimped team full of NE's and rangers wasting half of their skill bars with spirits? Ridiculous. At the very least, some [useful] primary linked skills are needed.

I dont like soul reaping.... But is it useful? Yep it sure is. I dont use it anymore, but believe me it does help out with en management. I would say its useful, but it could be even more useful.

From my experience in the past BWE, I've seen about 20% of the necros I've played make it useful and the others not. You have to be a master of having massive death on the field at all times, which usually means figuring out how to do minions well in PvP. There is nothing quite like having a monk friend maintain 6 of your minions and have them all die at once... it's like a free energy refill.

That said, I think Soul Reaping is one of the best PvE attributes in the game.